DW Squared
by Othellia
Summary: The TARDIS has a bit of a hiccup and takes the Doctor, Amy, and Rory to a mysterious room that's stacked to the ceiling with old postage.


**A/N: Wrote this for a LJ comm back in 2011. Polished it up a bit and posting here now. If I ever get inspiration for other one-off chapters with other characters, I'll append them, but for now I'm marking as complete.**

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><p>The TARDIS landed - as it occasionally did - with a drawn-out groan and a jolt that sent the three passengers in its control room scrambling vainly for a handhold before they ultimately tumbled onto the floor.<p>

Usually the Doctor didn't worry about these sort of crash landings. He'd known the TARDIS long enough that they were most often caused by neglect - not the physical neglect of an overlooked fraying cable, but rather a emotional neglect stemming from lack of attention and continuous flattery. His old girl could be a bit of a prima donna.

This was not one of those times.

There'd been sparking from the central console. Her groan had been a different pitch, the jolt from a different angle… All little things that only he as her pilot noticed.

Something was _wrong_.

"So, Doctor." Amy picked herself off the floor with her husband's help, a smile on her face. "Where have you taken us this time?"

"Don't know." He turned around slowly, taking in all the different angles of the TARDIS. Nothing _seemed_ too out of place. She was definitely alive and still healthy... for now.

"By don't know, do you mean that you've landed us down randomly who knows where for kicks again?" Rory asked. He raised an eyebrow and peered at the Doctor suspiciously. "Like that one time you got bored and we ended up on the planet with the man-eating penguins?"

"I told you before," the Doctor said with a short hand wave. Normally he welcomed their questions, but right now he didn't quite have the time. "They weren't penguins."

"Oh right. I forgot. They weren't penguins. They just happened to look _exactly_ like penguins due to the universe's law of impossible chance and wibbly something or other. Totally different."

"Wibbly-wobbly."

"Whatever."

The Doctor should have been cautious. He should've gone over all the scanners and readings for the outside atmosphere before he opened the door, but he didn't. The hairs on the back of his neck twitched. Somehow he could sense that he somewhere different. Somewhere new. And right now all he wanted to do was _know_.

Before Amy and Rory could even ask him if this was a wise idea, the Doctor flung open the doors of the TARDIS.

An avalanche of letters surged past him, spilling out across the TARDIS floor. The Doctor stumbled, falling, and the next thing he was aware of was Amy. An hand reached out from a curtain of red hair, grabbed his arm, and yanked him from a premature paper-filled burial.

"Gotcha," she said with a slight wink.

They paused to grin at each other. Then Amy looked behind him and her smile faded. The Doctor turned around to stare past the mountain of envelopes still trickling slowly through the door and into a dimly lit room. He stepped forward to get a better look.

The entire place was _coated_ with them. Piles and piles were stacked… no, piles wasn't the right word. There were pyramids of letters. There must have been hundreds of thousands… perhaps millions of them. They'd all been there a rather long time too, the Doctor noted as he flicked out his tongue to taste the papery air.

Still, he had been in stranger places.

"Doctor," Amy said. "Where exactly are we?"

"Told you before." He bent down, snatching a random envelope from the pile nearest him. "Don't know."

The paper was yellow with age, its address written in a very untidy, barely legible scrawl. Unfortunately the TARDIS's translation matrix extended only to languages, not handwriting. After trying out several different angles with limited success, he could make out what looked like:

Ronny Pennycove

27 Cockbill Street

The Shades, Ankh-Morpork

Or maybe it was Ranny... or Romy. It could lean either way when it came right down to it. He turned back to face the two Ponds.

"Well, shall we explore?" he asked, pocketing the letter absent-mindedly. "Nothing like an adventure you weren't expecting."

"If this ends up like the penguins…"

The Doctor gave Rory a look.

"If they looked like penguins, they were penguins," he said, bringing his index fingers up for extra emphasis. "Okay?"

"Okay!" Amy said, interjecting herself between the two men. "Nothing like a new world of… of postage, right? I'm sure we'll have lots of fun with, um, stamps and... um, stamps."

"Amy, just because this room is stuffed with mail doesn't mean the whole planet will be," Rory said.

"Thought you weren't coming."

"Of course I am," he said, following the other two out the TARDIS doors and into the room of old mail. "Can't let you-"

The dust rushed into Rory's lungs, and he dissolved into a coughing storm. Amy was soon having similar struggles. For creatures without respiratory bypasses, the key to surviving here seemed to be breathing as shallowly as possible.

The Doctor was starting to wonder where in the medical bay he'd last left his spare surgical masks, when he heard the noise. Or, more accurately, noises.

"Ssh!" the Doctor said.

"_Ssh_ what?" Amy hissed through her teeth. She'd temporarily regained her breath and was careful not to slip back into her husband's current fate. "He's coughing for God sakes!"

"Well have him cough quieter."

Amy managed to both glare and roll her eyes simultaneously, a special talent often reserved just for him and - on _particularly_ bad occasions - her husband. The Doctor gave her a roll of his own in return.

He listened again. There were definitely voices coming from behind a letter blocked door to his left. Soft now but... yes, definitely getting closer. As Rory slowly gained control of his breathing again, the Doctor could start to make out part of a conversation.

"Stanley felt the tremor, sir." The voice was male. It was old as well, but with a bit of spring still in it. The Doctor knew that kind of voice; he'd _had_ that kind of voice once. "The whole stamp division did actually," the voice continued. "Though of course they would seeing as how they're just above. Apparently knocked over quite a bit of files. Stanley was, um, less than pleased."

"Yes, and you mentioned letters?" That voice was also male, but it sounded younger. It also had a silky feel to it, the kind made for old time advertising and door-to-door sales people.

"Ah, yes. Haven't seen it myself, but Stanley said-" here the voice stopped. The Doctor guessed whoever was speaking had lowered the conversation to a whisper.

"The old days? Nonsense! That whole thing was straightened out after the fi-"

The door to his left swung open. The Doctor had to shield his eyes from the sudden burst of light, but he could hear the rush of the envelopes as they cascaded out into whatever hallway the two men were in. Well, that and the subsequent cursing.

"Not again! _Not_ again. I swear, if Vetinari expects me to deal with this whole mess agai…"

The Doctor and the young man looked up and met each other's eyes. They stared at each other.

"Hello!" the Doctor ventured with a small smile and a wave.

"Umm... hello?"

"Trespasser!" the old man bellowed.

He was a wiry contraption of bony limbs, spiky hair, and a worn - yet well washed - postal uniform. He pushed past the younger man and shook a gnarled fist in the Doctor's face. "You don't work here! You're a trespasser! Thought you could steal the post from under my nose, did you? This is city property, this is. I'll have you reported to the Watch!"

"Mr. Groat!" The old man backed away at once. Clearly the younger man was his superior. "I'm sure that we needn't bother the Watch about this at the current moment. When we haven't even introduced ourselves yet." He flashed a dental poster-worthy smile at the Doctor and offered his hand to shake. "Moist von Lipwig, Postmaster General."

The Doctor took it, almost taken aback by the firm strength in the man's grip. "Oh yes," he said. "I'm the Doctor." He broke his hand away and gestured to the Ponds who were standing awkwardly by yet another large pile of mail. "These are the Ponds. Lovely couple, if I may say so myself. Umm… and we just took a nasty bump, so if you could just remind us where we are again?"

Both Moist and Mr. Groat regarded the Doctor with suspicious looks.

"Basement of the Post Office. Ankh-Morpork," Moist slowly answered.

"Ankh what?" Amy said.

They stared at her.

"What," she said. "Sorry, I haven't heard of your city?"

"Excuse me," Moist said. He narrowed his eyes. "You mean to tell me that you've never heard of Ankh-Morpork? _None_ of you," he added when the Doctor and Rory exchanged equally clueless glances, "have heard of Ankh-Morpork?"

"I think they're lying, sir," Mr. Groat said, his eyes wide. "Best call the Watch. Yes, best we do."

"Who _hasn't_ heard of Ankh-Morpork?"

"Well, there is the Counterweight Continent."

"Yes, but even someone from the Counterweight Continent has to hear about Ankh-Morpork to _get _here. Besides, do they look like they're from the Counterweight Continent?"

Mr. Groat peered at them, seeming to take this question very seriously. "No," he eventually said. "I don't think they do. Though mind you I don't know of any place where they wear clothes like that." He waved his hand at Amy and Rory.

"Hey!" Amy said. "I dressed for... well, I dressed for somewhere other than this."

"Okay," the Doctor said with a frantic smile, attempting to regain some sort of control over the conversation. "Obviously we're not from around here, so if you could at least tell us what planet we're on, we'll be off and out of your hair and… well, mail for good."

Mr. Groat and Moist looked at each other. They were obviously confused about something, their wrinkled brows told that much. However, the Doctor wasn't exactly sure what of. Between the postage system and its workers' uniform, the Doctor assumed this planet had progressed to at least Victorian levels of information and technology. Oh, he'd run into many cultures that hadn't developed space travel yet, and even the ones that had already begun to take rudimentary steps could be quick to express their disbelief at both the possibility and feasibility of such travel… but this confusion seemed to run deeper than that.

Moist slowly looked back at the Doctor.

"What's a planet?"


End file.
